Hard Candy Sky: Old vs. New

I first became interested in nail polish when I was 11 or 12 years old, especially light blue nail polish. My biggest lemming at the time was Hard Candy Sky. I thought it was the most perfect light blue I'd ever seen, but at the time the $10-12 dollars it retailed for was too much for me. I would always look at it longingly in its pretty bottle with the cute matching ring, but instead of buying it I settled for a no-name brand that cost $3. It wasn't the same, though, but I forgot about it after a few years and my nail polish obsession really disappeared for a long time.

Fast-forward to 2009, when my nail polish obsession came back in spades! I searched for HCS on ebay every once in a while, but was hesitant to spend the $15+ many were charging for it (I guess some things never change!). I finally won an auction for a bottle of Sky and Jailbait for about $14 shipped? I was super excited to receive the bottle. Of course, a couple of weeks later, I was at Walmart and saw that Sky had been re-released! I decided to pick up a bottle just in case it was different.

So, here is my first nail polish lemming with its newer counterpart, side by side:


The most obvious difference is the packaging, of course. The bottles have different fonts, different amounts (the older one is on the left, with .5 oz. versus the newer bottle with .35 oz.), and different rings (the older one is made of a stretchier material, like jelly shoes, while the newer one is hard plastic). The older one looks just a tinge more greenish, but I think that might be due to its age.

On the nail, they look identical:


There is a subtle shimmer you can see in the bottle, but it's almost invisible on the nail. You can see it if you look very closely in bright light but it's hardly worth mentioning. The formulas were almost the same as well. The newer version was slightly thicker, but both were very streaky and required four coats to smooth out. I believe the older version also took just a little bit longer to dry. The most significant difference to me was the difference in the size of the brushes. Here they are, side by side:

Left is from the older bottle, right is the newer one. There doesn't seem to be much of a size difference, but the older brush is wider, thicker, and more flexible, making application easier. Other than the brush though, these polishes are pretty much the same.

I suppose this color isn't particularly unique, but I adore it and will always remember it as my first nail polish love. It was also one of the first Hard Candy nail polish colors (if not the first), so it's kind of like owning a bit of nail polish history. Out of the several light blues I own now, I still consider this one my favorite (probably always will).

Hard Candy makeup is available at Walmart.

Eyeko Military Polish

Sorry for the absence! My nails have been really brittle lately and I broke one and chipped another. I really need to moisturize more...

Anyway, a great and generous friend of mine recently sent me a bunch of nail stuff (among other things):

Some Eyeko polishes, Sinful colors nail art polishes, Priti NY polish, base and glitter polishes from transdesign, CND cuticle eraser, Halloween nail stickers, and mini match book emery boards! All very useful.

I've always wanted to try Eyeko, this is my first:

Military polish. I love this! It's a dark, murky, army green jelly. Such a great fall color. Application was great, opaque in two coats, which is what is shown here. I am wearing Seche Vite top coat in the picture, but the polish itself dried to a very glossy finish. There are some bald spots b/c I need to stop applying polish in poor lighting, haha.

At first glance I thought it looked like Chanel Khaki Brun, but when I put them side by side it's clear that Military is much greener:



I'll have to think of some fun Halloween nails to post soon!

OPI Burlesque and MAC Bad Fairy

I just got my Burlesque polishes yesterday! I would have swatched them yesterday if it weren't already dark, I was so excited by all the glitters! I only ordered the glitters and The Show Must Go On, plus Ink, which is not part of this collection.

L to R: Simmer and Shimmer, Show It and Glow It!, Ink (not part of Burlesque), The Show Must Go On!


L to R: Sparkle-icious, Extra-va-vaganza!, Bring On the Bling, Glow Up Already!

Also picked up my order from the MAC Venomous Villains collection:

Hot House lipglass and Bad Fairy nail polish


Here's Bad Fairy:


Coppery pink with a coppery orange duochrome and the base seems almost like a dusty pink. Really pretty. Formula was okay, but very sheer. Four thin coats shown here.

OPI The Show Must Go On!


This one is a bright fuchsia foil with a slight orange duochrome. Love this one too! Two coats shown. Formula on this was perfect, super easy to work with. Dried quickly.

I had heard that OPI The Show Must Go On! could be a dupe of Bad Fairy, so here they are side by side:

Bad Fairy on the left, TSMGO on the right. Definitely not close enough to be called dupes. Pics aren't great, but basically Bad Fairy is more coppery and has a stronger duochrome. Also, the Bad Fairy formula was more watery and much more sheer. Here is each after one coat:

Bad Fairy is very sheer while TSMGO is almost completely opaque already. I also think that TSMGO would be more flattering on a wider range of skin tones, but I do think they are different enough to justify owning both!

On to the glitters! I apologize in advance for the messiness, glitter is so hard to clean up!

Extra-va-vaganza! This one is mostly orange and silver with a sprinkling of yellow, green, blue, and magenta glitter. Definitely wearing this for Halloween!


Sparkle-icious. Equal parts purple, yellow, and blue glitter. Pics really don't do this one justice! Super fun color, like a party in a bottle!


Bring On The Bling. This one seems to have equal parts everything! I can see yellow, silver, orange, magenta, blue, and green. I like that it kind of looks like a pewter-gold at first, but it sparkles so many different colors.


Glow Up Already! This one is mostly gold-green glitter but also contains silver, kelly green, orange, magenta, and blue. I love the green tinge. I wonder how this compares to Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore? Hopefully I get my hands on that one soon so I can compare!


Show It and Glow It! This one is mostly magenta and silver but also contains blue, yellow, orange, and green. Possibly my favorite of the collection, but it's hard to choose!


Simmer and Shimmer. Mostly blue and silver, but also has magenta, yellow, orange, and green. I'm wearing this today to the Dodgers game later!

I love glitters so it's no surprise that I really like all of these! I love that they're so multicolored, being able to see all the different colors makes you want to look at them all day. Be sure to click on each image to show the full-sized version, you can see the glitter in much more detail. I have shown three coats of each and they were pretty much opaque; any bald spots you see are my own fault. I didn't use any topcoat for the swatches but they were gritty so you will probably want to use one. Topcoat also intensifies the sparkle! Drying time was fairly quick and the consistency was pretty easy to work with. I would definitely recommend all of them!

Be careful when removing them. Either place remover-soaked pads on your nails and wrap with foil or press the pad against each nail for 20 seconds and a time before swiping it away. It was pretty easy to remove using this method, but make sure to have plenty of pads on hand and use a clean section for each nail. The removed polish was rubbing onto my hands from the pads.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

MAC Light Affair Dupe - BB Couture Intake Valve

My interest in nail polish started way too late for the Love Lace collection from MAC, but I saw Light Affair and really wanted it! I checked ebay and it was going for around $26 (more than double retail), so I gave up. I later saw a swatch of BB Couture Intake Valve (from their men's collection) and thought it looked very similar so I bought it. A few weeks ago I was able to score Light Affair on ebay for a decent price and I finally got it today.



They are really very similar! Both are kind of a grayish, lavender-ish nude creams that look a bit different depending on the light. Intake Valve has a very subtle shimmer in the bottle but it disappears on the nail. It looks just barely lighter than Light Affair if you look really carefully, but it's by far the closest substitute out there, and they're way too close to each other to justify owning both if you already have one. The formula on IV was easier to work with and a bit more opaque, although I am wearing three coats of each color in the pictures.

Light Affair is available on ebay, and possibly makeupalley. Intake Valve is available on BB Couture's website for $9.95 and overallbeauty for $9 (shipping not included).

I'm not really sure if I love this color in its own, but I've seen some pictures of it with black patterns stamped on top and I think it looks great. "Love Lace" made me think of lace, of course! This pattern isn't lace exactly, but it's certainly reminiscent of it:



I used Konad plate m71 with Konad special polish in black. I'm not sure if this is the case with other black polishes but this one was hard to clean up! It left black smears everywhere and I ended up having to clean everything with nail polish remover and then soap and water.

In other (nail) news, I ordered some polishes from the OPI Burlesque collection and they should be here by the end of the week, yay!

The Best Chanel Jade Dupes Head To Head: Catrice vs. Milani

My recent obsession with nail polish is fairly recent, and my willingness to pay for high-end polishes is an even more recent development. So, of course, I missed out on last year's Chanel Jade. I honestly don't have a strong preference for Chanel polishes, but I do love mint greens, so I was pretty disappointed to see that it sold in the hundreds on ebay. I was pleased, however, to find out that there were some great dupes out there! I first found out about Catrice Sold Out Forever here: http://www.lushiousbeauty.nl/2010/04/catrice-nieuwe-nagellakjes-chanel-jade-dupe/
SOFE is the closest dupe in the comparison picture. It is not readily available in the US, but a friend of mine from Belgium was kind enough to send me a bottle.

Recently, though, Milani came out with a color called Dress Maker, and after seeing the comparison pics on Steph's Closet, I had to have it. It's available at CVS in a special display (or wherever Milani is sold), and also on their website. If you can't find it in a brick-and-mortar store, I highly recommend ordering it from the website as it is selling for quite a bit on ebay.

So, after buying both, I had to do my own comparison of course. Here they are, side by side (please ignore the lumpiness on my pinky, I broke it and had to use the tea bag method):















Yikes, my hands look so red in the bright sun! I have an olive skin tone so "lobster hands" usually isn't a problem for me, but these pictures would have you believe otherwise!

In the bottle, SOFE is slightly more on the sage side while DM is more minty. DM has more shimmer, SOFE's shimmer is more subtle. DM is slightly more sheer; in the pictures I am wearing three coats of DM and two coats of SOFE. Both formulas were easy to work with, but SOFE comes with a wide brush while DM has a thinner, standard brush and took a bit longer to dry (probably because it required more coats). On the nail, it's really hard to tell the difference between them except for the shimmer.

Overall, I love both colors and formulas. Of course, most people will not have to worry about which to choose since it's hard to find a place where both Milani and Catrice polishes are easy obtainable.

Hope this helps!

Light Blue Comparison

I love blues and I love pastels! I have a fair number of pastel blues in my collection so I thought I'd do a comparison.

In the bottles:



L to R: Diamond Cosmetics Oh Tiff!, DC Tranquility, OPI What's With The Cattitude? (my doggy chewed the cap!), Studio M Whose That Girl/Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau (same company, same polish, different bottles), Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Dive Deeper (I believe this is from the limited-edition Tracy Reese collection, the one that included Hidden Treasure)

On the fingers:



Thumb to pinky (same as the order of the bottles): Diamond Cosmetics Oh Tiff!, DC Tranquility, OPI What's With The Cattitude?, Studio M Whose That Girl/Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Dive Deeper

With Dive Deeper on top;



Too bad you can't really see the shimmer effect!

Oh Tiff! is a true Tiffany blue, kind of a pastel blue-green or aqua. In fact, I put my thumb against a Tiffany box and it really looks like the exact shade to me, although the lighting here isn't that great right now. There's some kind of secret shimmer in it but it's pretty much impossible to see, even in the sun. I've mentioned this one in a previous post already but the application is good. A tiny bit streaky, but in two coats it was perfect.

Tranquility is bluer than Oh Tiff!, closer to a robin's egg blue but still a bit greenish compared to Cattitude. Application was similar to OT, but better. Two coats in the picture.

What's With The Cattitude? is a true robin's egg blue. This one is more of a jelly than a cream, I'd say. It was more sheer than the others (except Dive Deeper) and a bit more watery. Two coats was fine for me, though.

Take Me To Your Chateau is my favorite of the five right now, I think. It's a stark, mod pale blue with absolutely no shimmer or anything. I've been looking for something like this for a while, something similar to Hard Candy Sky, and I think this is it! Application on this one was perfect! I actually only used one coat of this one, and it dried very quickly. The finish was almost satin, so it definitely could use a top coat, although I did apply all of these alone without base or top coat.

Dive Deeper is a sheer, pearlescent pale blue with iridescent microglitter. I was excited to try it because it's so pretty in the bottle, but I was really disappointed. I used two coats in the picture but it could have used a third (nail line was still visible). Also, it never dried! I did put it on my pinky so maybe I painted it on a bit thick, but even when I put on a thin coat over the other colors it took quite a while.

Oh Tiff against a Tiffany box:



Very similar, no? It's kind of hard to compare because the box is textured while the nail polish is glossy. Oh Tiff! dries darker on the nail than it shows in the bottle. I believe China Glaze For Audrey is similar but a bit darker.

Hope this helped!